Mr. Nolan?

Mr. NOLAN. My only question was-I think you answered it- and that is if we could come up with the kind of cash assistance that a family would need to provide for both their heating and their housing and their transportation and their food, you would then be for elimination of food stamps? Unless there is that kind of income, you would prefer to retain the food stamp provisions so the family is assured of some kind of adequate nutritious diet?

MS. WICKENDEN. Plus continuity of income I think is an important factor.

Ms. BLANK. That is the most important.

Ms. WICKENDEN. It's not only adequacy but continuity.

Mr. NOLAN. Thank you. I have no further questions, Mr. Chairman, I just thank the witnesses.

Mr. CORMAN. Mr. Sarasin will inquire.

Mr. SARASIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Miss Wickenden, I apologize for not being here when you started your statement but I did hear the last few moments of it. You were talking about the great success in 1935 and the larger number of jobs slots that were provided as compared to the number in this bill. What wage levels do you think we should be looking at for the jobs that are provided in this legislation?

MS. WICKENDEN. I think that there are some difficulties surrounding a limit to the minimum wage and that there should be a little more latitude moving toward the prevailing wage. This, however, is not at all what we did in the WPA. I think that there we had a separate monthly schedule of wages that would seem very low by today's standards.

Mr. SARASIN. Were they low by the standards existing at that time?

MS. WICKENDEN. No, they weren't. We had continuously the same battle that goes on today, because in certain parts of the country agricultural wages were so far below. We started out on the minimum wage, which was at that time 30 cents an hour. There were some jobs in rural agriculture, particularly in the South where that was high, that we ran into a great deal of controversy.

Mr. SARASIN. How was that resolved? To lessen the minimum at that time.

MS. WICKENDEN. That was one of the great controversies of the period.

Mr. SARASIN. The difficulty we face now is a much more highly organized work force. The kinds of work that were done then and the suggestions certainly made to, I think, every Member of Congress, very often is why don't we just recreate the CCC camps and the WPA, and we will fix the roads and build the sidewalks and everything else. Now, we run into the public service unions, the building trades who have their own employees, their own members out of work, who are saying if you are going to do that kind of a project, then, of course, you must follow the Davis-Bacon provision, and all of the other provisions that have since been placed in the law, and now we are talking about a lot more dollars.

MS. WICKENDEN. We had unions in those days, too, and we ran into many of those problems. Of course, we had a vast number of

unemployed. We didn't even know how many unemployed there were, but estimates ran as high as 15 million. So, the pressure for jobs was always very great. We did provide a very wide range of kinds of jobs, running from white collar, simple jobs like canning and sewing room jobs, all the way up to rather sophisticated construction.

Mr. SARASIN. Was there a difference in the wage level paid? MS. WICKENDEN. I hate to get you all launched on that. Yes, we had three sorts of differentials. We had the urban, rural differential, we had the regional differential for different parts of the country, and then we had differentials for professional workers, skilled workers, and unskilled workers, as I recall it. Each of those had a different schedule.

Mr. SARASIN. Of course we are talking about a program designed to deal with the unemployed rather than the welfare recipient? MS. WICKENDEN. Well, it really was not exactly so, Mr. Sarasin, because in 1935 we stopped what we had had before, which was the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which was welfare of that day, and we said the State should take care of any unemployables and the Federal Government would put the employables to work on WPA.

We never had enough jobs to put all the unemployed to work, and that led to some friction, but there was a clear dividing of those who at that time we called unemployable and employable. However, people only got their WPA income. There was not this effort to combine a cash benefit with a wage. It was one thing or the other in that period.

Mr. SARASIN. Do you recall what the unemployment level was in 1935?

MS. WICKENDEN. As I said earlier, we really didn't know. We had very poor statistics, recordkeeping at that time on unemployment, so estimates ran as high as 15 million.

Mr. SARASIN. What percentage would that have been?

MS. WICKENDEN. I am terribly sorry, I am bad on things like population figures, work force figures. It certainly was higher than the present.

Mr. SARASIN. We are talking about 18 percent at this time, but I think it was 18 or 19 percent in 1939.

MS. WICKENDEN. That depends on whether you include the WPA workers as unemployed.

Mr. SARASIN. I don't think the statistics that I have seen, and I may be wrong, I am reaching back now, counted as unemployed if they were in the WPA program. I think the point I am making at this juncture is that in spite of all, the programs that took place in the 1930's, it unfortunately was World War II that put people to work. I hope we will find a better solution.

MS. WICKENDEN. I hope so, too. I was going to say that as soon as jobs began coming available in the period prior to World War II, around 1940, the rolls began to dwindle immediately. People were absorbed in private employment when the jobs were there.

I think one thing we learned in World War II is that there is really no such thing as a totally unemployable person. We had people lying in hospital beds fitting parts of small machines. together.

Mr. SARASIN. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CORMAN. Are there other questions of these witnesses? Ms. Keys, would you like them to stay, or do you want to question now?

Ms. KEYS. If they could stay.

Mr. CORMAN. If you would excuse us for a few minutes, we are going to vote, and we will be back as promptly as we can. [Brief recess to vote.]

Mr. NOLAN [presiding]. The subcommittee will reconvene.
Are there any other questions for the witnesses? Mr. Brodhead?
Mr. BRODHEAD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Ball, I wanted to ask you some questions particularly about the jobs portion of the bill. Do you have any thoughts on what the wage for these jobs ought to be? The administration proposes that the wage be at or near the minimum wage. Numerous other witnesses before this subcommittee have testified that it should be the entry level wage or the prevailing wage or the prevailing entry wage.

What are your thoughts on that?

Mr. BALL. My feeling is that it should be at the minimum wage. The bill says something about striving for promotion or advancement in the public sector jobs.

Mr. BRODHEAD. There is a provision allowing workers to rise to a supervisory level in the public service jobs. Is that what you are referring to?

Mr. BALL. Yes.

Mr. BRODHEAD. Ten percent of the people would receive another 25 percent in wages.

How do you square your feeling about the inadequacy of the levels of support with your feeling that the compensation ought to be at the minimum wage?

Mr. BALL. At least the minimum wage. That is where it will be, anyway, isn't it?

Mr. BRODHEAD. Well, that is one of the problems that we are going to be wrestling with here. You see, the minimum wage is substantially below the prevailing wage in most instances. In other words, if we are going to employ people, as teachers' aides, for example, in many places, there are teacher aides employed at $3.50, $4 and $4.25 an hour. So the question is whether we ought to be paying public service jobs holders the same as other people doing similar kinds of work.

Mr. BALL. I would hope it would be at the prevailing wage, and the league's position is for the prevailing wage.

Mr. BRODHEAD. Let me ask you another question about this work requirement. I was very much taken with the suggestion that the mother should be the judge of whether or not she ought to work. It seems to me that every family situation is different. There are lots of families with children under 6 in which it poses no problem at all for the mother to go to work. Perhaps there is a relative living in the home or relatives nearby or some other quite adequate system of caring for the children.

I think, on the other hand, there are plenty of homes in which the children are over the age of 6 where the children might be having emotional problems or health problems and so on, where it would be entirely inappropriate for the mother to work.

It really bothers that we are not recognizing that the care of children is work. It is, in my opinion, and ought to be considered by this administration, to be the most important work that our society has to do.

Mr. BALL. I would hope that, but I am not convinced that is what comes through in the bill as it is written.

Mr. BRODHEAD. No, it clearly does not. We have an arbitrary cutoff that when the child reaches the age of 7, the mother has to work part time. When the child reaches the age of 14, the mother has to work full time or her level of support is substantially diminished.

Ms. BLANK. Can I say something to that point?

Mr. BRODHEAD. Yes.

Ms. BLANK. We agree with you. We are in favor of language being added to exclude work requirements for mothers who have children of any age, with special needs. We also believe as children get older that developmental issues are of greater concern, and it isn't necessarily true that a mother has less responsibility once her child reaches 6 or 7. It often helps to have a mother around to check on teenagers. We think the work requirement, in general, as it relates to mothers in the long run, is not so cost-effective in terms of the problems that often result from unsupervised children.

Mr. BRODHEAD. Yes, that is a good point. We are considering requiring mothers to work, but under the administration proposal jobs wouldn't be provided for single people or childless couples. In other words, a job wouldn't even be available to them.

These are people that you would think would be much more able to work, and a worker is a worker. Why does the administration want to compel a mother to work but make it more difficult for a single person or childless couple to work. Under their proposal there isn't a job to be made available for those people.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. NOLAN. The gentleman from New York.

Mr. RICHMOND. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Ball, just one brief question. I am very much interested in day care. Day care is very much involved in the entire development of true welfare reform. You can't have a real welfare reform bill unless we do something about day care, right?

Mr. BALL. I think so.

Mr. RICHMOND. Day care in New York City costs $65 per child per week now, in a State-certified day care center.

In fact, I built one some years ago, called the Helen Owen Carey Day Care Center, named in honor of Governor Carey's wife.

It cost $65 a week and obviously that cost would be expanded if we have mandatory day care for all welfare mothers.

What do you think of family day care? First of all, do you agree $65 a week is probably more than the country can afford for day care on a massive basis?

Mr. BALL. I don't know that. I really don't.

Mr. RICHMOND. It is pretty high.

Mr. BALL. It varies all over the country, of course.

Mr. RICHMOND. In New York City, abiding by the New York State Department of Health, you just can't give day care for less than $65 a week. That, of course, is in a brand new, beautiful building, with dietitians and teachers and nurses and extra people.

Mr. BALL. I think it is a question of whether the program is going to be focused on needs of children in terms of child development or simply a caretaking operation, and we have both kinds.

Mr. RICHMOND. We have to believe all poor mothers are only caretakers?

Mr. BALL. Indeed not.

Mr. RICHMOND. Wouldn't it be plausible and reasonable to assume in any given neighborhood there are many others who may be poor but who would be excellent mothers so five mothers could work and one could take care of the children?

Mr. BALL. There are problems with that. I have had a day care center under my administration, and we have had children coming in from co-op day care programs where problems would come up because the volunteer mothers, as it were, at a point at which their child became sick, got the sniffles, or didn't feel good, would not show up.

Mr. RICHMOND. I am talking about using the volunteer mothers, that is, family day care. Under family day care you don't have a facility. You use one of the mothers' houses or apartments to take care of a group of children.

Mr. BALL. I heard of one in Detroit where there were 14 children being taken care of in the basement of a tenement by a small group of mothers.

Mr. RICHMOND. I am talking about six children being taken care of in a decent apartment, like the mothers' own children are being taken care of.

We have to believe poor mothers are not necessarily stupid or bad mothers; correct?

Mr. BALL. Absolutely.

Mr. RICHMOND. Now, what do you think of the concept of family day care where one mother takes care of five other mothers' children and gets paid for it, thereby getting off welfare herself? Mr. BALL. My feeling is that they would need to be under some kind of license.

Mr. RICHMOND. They are.

Mr. BALL. Not everywhere.

Mr. RICHMOND. In New York State they are under control of the State department social workers and department of health. Inspectors go around and we give them all manner of materials and, of course, the USDA provides them with food. But it seems to me family day care is what we should be looking at.

Mr. BALL. I wouldn't quarrel with that if it has safeguards. I think Miss. Wickenden would like to comment.

MS. WICKENDEN. I wanted to say the league's position is strongly supportive of family day care so long as it is part of an overall organized program with some supervision. I think New York City has had a very interesting experience with that where they have